By Dara Bradley

Galway City will be paying €600,000 every year for the next 20 years for the Seamus Quirke Road upgrade.

The latest official estimates for the Westside road project, which is over-budget and was delivered several months behind schedule, is that it will cost a total of €16.5 million, although this figure is expected to rise.

Galway City Council has applied for a loan worth €8 million, €2 million more than initially expected, from the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport.

The term of the loan is 20 years at an interest rate of 4.43% meaning the Council will need to source €600,000 per annum from its own diminished yearly budget.

According to correspondence between the City Council and Department, released to the Connacht Sentinel under the Freedom of Information Act, Head of the Galway Transportation Unit, Joe Tansey, is hoping to get a grant of €2 million from the Strategic Regional and Local Roads Grants this year, 2012, in order to reduce the amount of the long-term loan required by the Council to €6 million.

In 2010, the project was granted €800,000 from the Department of Transport and a further €250,000 from the National Roads Authority (NRA).

Last year, the NRA granted €2 million initially but subsequently granted a further €1.5 million in November 2011. In 2011, €2 million was given by the department under its Regional Bus Priority Funding; while the Council also received Border/Midlands/West (BMW) ERDF funding to the tune of €2 million.

The total grant funding allocation up to the beginning of this year was €8.5 million; the loan was to cover the remainder.

Read more in today’s Connacht Sentinel